


How Simple It is to be a Saint

by locketofyourhair, sinuous_curve



Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Established Relationship, Flogging, M/M, PWP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-15
Updated: 2012-06-15
Packaged: 2017-11-07 20:29:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/435120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/locketofyourhair/pseuds/locketofyourhair, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinuous_curve/pseuds/sinuous_curve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce doesn't ask for a whole lot, but he asked for this. Clint will give it to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Simple It is to be a Saint

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by the wonderful Rachel. Written for kink bingo amnesty. Characters are property of Marvel and no profit is being made, etc. 
> 
> Title comes from the quote: A saint is a person who gives of themself without asking for anything in return. That's how simple it is to be a saint. (Edward James Olmos)

Part of Clint is surprised when he enters the room and Bruce is already stripped down on his bed, the flogger still in its bag by his leg. This thing between them is still new enough that Clint can’t always guess what Bruce is going to do. It’s like a surprise every time, and it makes a worrying tightness creep into his chest when he likes what Bruce has done, a happiness that Clint is afraid of. 

But he does let himself smile when that feeling strikes now. “I knew there was a reason they called you a genius. Stand up and brace yourself on the wall.”

Bruce doesn’t move gracefully. There’s a gangliness to him that he can’t ever seem to escape, like his limbs are too long for him, even though he’s not tall. The way he arranges himself on the wall isn’t neat or perfect, but kind of haphazard, with his elbows sticking out. 

Clint takes off his jacket and his button-down and picks up the flogger. He hits the inside of his arm, and Bruce tenses, muscles of his back clenching and then easing. 

“You’re eager,” Clint says, and Bruce nods. His legs shift apart wider. 

They’re coming at this sideways, Clint knows. There’s a script to follow with talks about wants and needs and desires that they’ve skipped over, relying instead on touches and gestures and something that thrums between them. He suspect it’s rooted, at least in part, in Bruce not have a terrible amount of experience in getting the things that he wants, and always assuming that something will go wrong. 

Clint has no intention of letting anything go wrong, though if his experiences have imparted nothing else, it’s that no one has all that much control at the end of the day.

“Are you going to hulk on me?” Clint asks, slapping the leather of the flogger against his own thigh, because he likes the way Bruce shivers at the sound. 

Bruce turns his head to the side, just enough for Clint to see the hectic flush rising on his cheeks. “I don’t think so,” Bruce says. “The trigger isn’t just pain, it’s also a negative emotional response.” 

Whether he means it to be or not, Clint can feel the weight of responsibility slide a little bit heavier onto his shoulders. If this goes bad--and it won’t, he thinks firmly, he will not let that happen--it’ll be, in part, because something he does triggers something bad. They’re all landmines of bad associations and nightmares, old memories clawing at their skin and settle in the locked down places. 

“Okay,” Clint says. “I trust you.” And that’s true, but said out loud for Bruce’s benefit rather than his own. 

He starts out trailing the ends of the leather over Bruce’s back and ass, up and down his thighs. It’s not a particularly heavy piece, though it’s significantly more serious than the slap-and-tickle crap they sell hidden in the back of stores at the mall. Clint catalogues the reactions he gets from Bruce; his heel pops up when it brushes over the back of his knees, which probably means ticklish, the muscles in his shoulders tightening when Clint sweeps along his inner thigh. 

Clint smirks and swings the flogger, still light touches against Bruce’s upper back. He’s always careful to start, making sure he has a good control of the piece. He comes down a little harder against Bruce’s ass, three slaps to one cheek and then the other, and Bruce is already hissing, his forehead pressed against the wall. 

When he hits Bruce’s inner thigh again, he’s rewarded with a full-body shiver that makes Clint hard just watching. Impact play isn’t his favorite thing; he won’t let anyone do this to him, but he’s not used to seeing someone get this into it, not this quickly. 

He moves away from Bruce’s thighs, back to his shoulders. He keeps the hits light, even, and Bruce shifts a little. He wants more, something harder. Clint will give it to him, but he’ll have to wait until Clint is ready to go there.

“I’m going to beat you black and blue,” he says, a small concession. The flogger slaps loudly, but there is no disguising the sound Bruce makes. 

Clint appreciate the trusts this takes, far and beyond the usual back and forth of this kind of thing. He wonders if the other guy will bruise up like Bruce will, if he’ll have dark green shadows on his skin that match the pattern Clint’s going to leave on Bruce. He files that question away for another day. 

Bruce’s skin slowly starts to flush bright, beautiful red. Clint pauses long enough to scrape his nails down the length of Bruce’s spine, savoring the low, shocked sound Bruce makes, and then run his palm over the same path. Heat comes off Bruce like he’s burning up on the inside, which is exactly what Clint wants.

This may not be his favorite, but it has its appealing aspects. 

“Can I keep going?” Clint asks, taking a step back. 

Clint doesn’t have the same reckless joy of the other guy that Tony has. On the flipside, he doesn’t have the same worrying conservatism Steve has, or else he never would have stepped foot in the room. They’re walking an edge here, testing limits and relying on Bruce’s will to make sure everything works out in the end. Clint could love Bruce for that alone. 

Bruce nods. “Yes, please.” 

“So polite,” Clint murmurs, and lands the first hard, punishing blow on Bruce’s back. The sound it makes is fucking wonderful. 

He falls into a rhythm after that, alternating from side to side and watching Bruce relax and fall deeper and deeper into it. Clint’s breathing hard already, sweating, and he listens between swings for the sounds Bruce makes. Bruce isn’t a terribly demanding bed-partner. There’s things he will tolerate and accept without question -- that Clint doesn’t particularly enjoy bottoming, that Clint likes biting, and so on -- but it makes things hard because Clint never really knows what he _wants_. There’s a disconnect, and sometimes he feels like he’ll never understand Bruce.

But like this, here, he knows. He watches for every twitch and shiver. He flogs Bruce hard enough on his ass that he’s going to feel it in the morning, when he’s trying to perch on those stools in the lab and talk to Stark. He’s going to feel this and remember what Clint did to him. 

He goes until he can see the first reddish-purple marks appearing, until Bruce is making delicious, broken noises and shifting like he can’t hold still anymore. 

Clint steps close enough that he can feel the heat coming off Bruce’s skin. “Turn around,” he murmurs. “I want to see you.”

Bruce obeys with that mix of hesitance and eagerness that Clint has never seen out of anyone before. He turns and backs himself up the wall, splaying his hands palm down on the wallpaper. Clint looks at him, at the flush on his chest and neck and cheeks and the hard line of his cock. There’s always something in these moments that want to go recklessly over the lines that he’s set. Clint thinks, but would never say, that he wonders sometimes how sharp and absolute the line between Bruce and the other guy is. 

The thing is, Bruce looks at Clint with trust. Along with a whole tangle of other things, but mostly trust. 

Clint takes a step forward and catches Bruce’s jaw in his hand. His stubble is rough beneath Clint’s fingers and damn if he doesn’t love that sensation for his own purposes. He kisses Bruce hard, shoving a knee between Bruce’s askance legs, and swallows down the soft noise that Bruce makes. 

He knows that pushing Bruce against the wall is making him hurt. He knows that Bruce might want that more than anything else they do. 

Clint braces one hand against Bruce's hip, so his fingers are just at the edge of the burning skin. Bruce shivers again, and Clint breaks the kiss so his cry is loud in the still air. 

His other hand is still holding the flogger, so he can't get a grip around Bruce's cock, to feel how he twitches and pulses from the pain of being pressed up to the wall like this. Instead, Clint knocks the flogger lightly against bruce's stomach. "If I kept going, could you come without a hand on you?" He kisses Bruce again, quick and dirty, before he can answer. "Could you do that for me?"

Bruce's pupils are blown, eyes unfocused, but he nods. It takes him a moment to answer, to get himself collected enough to find the words. "Yeah, I think I can."

And that's all Clint needs to hear. He steps back and lays careful swings on Bruce’s chest and belly. Bruce’s skin goes red and his fingers flex on the walls. 

Clint isn’t sure that Bruce can do it. His dick is flushed and leaking, but that doesn’t mean anything. Clint needs something to come, a hand or something to rub against. Bruce’s hips are stuttering though, like the rhythm is going out of him, and the sounds he makes are familiar, ripped out of his throat. 

It takes three more strikes, one to the chest and another two the belly, and Bruce is coming in hot spurts over his stomach. He leans heavily on his back, on the bruises, and he makes a soft gasp of pain. 

Clint helps Bruce stand, to breathe through the last of it. “Can you turn around again?” he asks, starting to turn Bruce already. Clint wants to see the bruises, to see what’s formed already. He rubs himself against Bruce’s leg because it’s harder to ignore how badly he needs to come when he’s not working on Bruce. 

“Yeah,” Bruce says, and he sounds almost proud of himself. He’s languid and maybe a little loopy from his orgasm and pain. He settles back on the wall with his legs spread again, hands on the wall. He presses one cheek against the wall. 

“Stay there,” Clint says, and he pulls off his jeans and underwear, so he’s as naked as Bruce. “I need to...” He presses one hand on the largest bruise on Bruce’s shoulder, digging his nails into Bruce’s skin. 

Clint tries to set a rhythm against Bruce’s ass, rubbing against him, but it’s harder than he thought. He keeps getting distracted by the feel of Bruce’s skin, how hot it is, the way it blanches when he presses against it. Bruce’s gasps and groans don’t make it easier.

Bruce pushes his ass back against Clint, and Clint wraps his hand back around Bruce’s hip, to hold him close. It feels good, the heat coming off Bruce’s ass, the way he shivers and shakes for Clint. Clint scratches at Bruce’s shoulders now, loving the way Bruce keeps crying out. He used to be scared of this part of himself, the part that really just loved causing pain. It works well in the field, but the bedroom is different. 

He bites down on Bruce’s shoulder when he comes, digging his teeth in, and Bruce nearly screams, going flat against the wall because he can’t stand anymore. The wall and Clint are the only things holding him up.

Clint is careful when he moves back, keeping Bruce with him. He gets Bruce onto the bed in slow, measured movements. This is still awkward, the moments after they’ve both come and they’re clumsy. Getting into bed together takes some serious thought, and Clint’s brain isn’t there yet.

Bruce hisses when the mattress presses against his back. “I should, um, get some--” Clint starts to move away, because there is shit he needs to do to take care of Bruce now, but Bruce weakly flops his hand out. 

“Stay with me?” Bruce whispers, and his voice is wrecked from crying out, from screaming. 

Clint closes his eyes before he rolls into bed next to Bruce, arranging himself carefully beside him. “Just for a minute,” he says softly, even though his eyelids are already heavy.


End file.
